Hyperbole (or The Holy Grail of Manhood)
by miranda0
Summary: Second-person viewpoint of a woman tasked with interviewing soldiers on the ground during the Iraq War for personal interest stories. Sounds pedantic, but basically this is a humor-filled story about lust. Rating for the language and the obviously necessary Smut.
1. Chapter 1

Sgt. William James has a reputation.

This is possibly the biggest understatement in the history of the Army. James having a "reputation" is very much like saying "America shot something at Japan in 1945."

James' reputation on the field of battle-his field, really, because when it comes to engaging ordnance, there is no one else who can rival him-is legendary, even for those who shudder to think that they may have to engage that field with him someday. There is no doubt that he is reckless, that he has an edge that will ultimately cost him his life, and that he plays hard and fast with the rules.

There is equally little doubt that those very qualities are what give him his reputation off his field of battle.

In the words of those lucky enough to share his bed: "He will ruin you for all other men."

You find this to be, well, impossible. No man is so superior a lover that he can make all men seem not only inferior but just plain inadequate. You're a journalist, after all, and you're only there to write about James and the near-constant rotations he puts himself into.

During your internship at _Rolling Stone_, you heard just about every urban myth about sex and rock-n-roll, and denounced at least a few of those yourself (it is nice, though, that Adam does remember to send you a birthday card each year to commemorate that one myth-making experience the two of you enjoyed that one time after _way_ too much tequila down in Miami...).

So, while you're sure that your boss didn't send you over to get the full scoop on James' bedroom habits, you figure...it might be worth a shot-provided, of course, that he isn't completely hideous. After all, James is out with his team at the moment, apparently caught in a firefight in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and you haven't had a chance to view the man in person.

You, meanwhile, have been "in country" for less than a week and feel like you'll never eat again. Dysentery is hardly the word for what you're experiencing.

It is in the women's barracks that you learn of James' reputation. Tango Company currently only has nine women serving, so surveying the entire field of women is a question of moving between three rooms in the makeshift building.

You started with the women because they are going to be your bunkmates and possibly your lifeline to sanity for the next two weeks as you spend your time with Tango Company in general and James and his crew in particular.

Barker, a beautiful and muscular woman, is the first to get into the "girl talk" (and even here, in the Army, there is girl talk). "You want to know about James? It's simple: he's completely, bat-shit crazy."

"I think bat-shit crazy is going lightly on him," Andover, another Private, agrees. "He's out of his goddamn ever-loving mind. Makes for a great poker player, though, because you never know if he's bluffing or not."

Does he have a poker face?

"He's all over the place," Andover continues. "I mean, it's like watching footage of Jimmy Fallon outtakes sometimes. But it makes him deadly."

Deadly?

"All kinds of deadly." The woman speaking now is Haverly. You noticed earlier that she isn't one to speak up but rather someone who nods a lot in agreement. But there's this _tone_ to her voice, a very knowing and informative tone, that zeroes in on your gut. She's clearly not talking about just poker.

Barker laughs. "You would know, wouldn't you? You still fucking him or not?"

Haverly looks off into the distance. "He knows my fiancé. Thought it might make bad blood, so it was only those couple of weeks."

"Luckiest damn bitch on the ground over here," Andover mutters.

Haverly looks at her with skepticism. "Lucky? He's ruined me for all other men."

Hyperbole much?

She looks you in the eye, and it's unnerving. This woman is not muscular like Barker, nor the would-be-pro-basketballer that Andover is. She is athletic, not slim, and somewhat attractive in that girl-next-door kind of way. Yet, the look in her eyes...it's a kick in the gut.

Because this woman knows how to inflict pain, and yet she seems to be drowning in it.

"Being with James...it's not exactly for the faint of heart. But yeah. I love my fiancé, and I know James goes back to his wife when he's not here, and he's completely ruined me."

_What is it like to be ruined by a man?_ you wonder. _These women, they are warriors. They are fierce and determined. And this one man can ruin them?_

Damn any rules the AP has ever had.

Unless the man is completely hideous, you now have a new purpose for being here.


	2. Chapter 2

You wake to the sand.

The sand is everywhere. You feel it on your tongue. In your throat, Nasal passages. This fine coating of silica that cannot be gargled, spat, neti-potted, or anything else-d out of your system.

Your bunkmates have slipped away to duties, so you head to the showers in a vain effort to get the sand away from the rest of your body.

Standing outside the women's, you finally get your first glimpse of the man of the hour. Barker walks by you and points him out.

Your first thought is: _Jesus Christ._

You've never been much of a church-going woman before this moment, but you're starting to think it's a good idea. Because that body didn't come from some sort of random experiment. That body was clearly made by a higher life form that deserves your worship.

You try very hard not to gape—open mouth, more opportunities for sand to grate your tongue—but succeed only in closing your mouth. Your eyes stay laser-focused.

James and his crew have finally returned from their rotation in the desert and are refitting their vehicle. James is gesticulating to someone—who cares who it is —and you take in those arms. The shoulders, chest, narrows to waist, slender hips...

...and then he turns around.

You feel as if you should drop to your knees in worship.

Strangely, you realize that you didn't even take in his face. Not that the face would matter. Because he has the finest ass you have ever seen. The man could honestly look like Ernest Borgnine and it wouldn't matter because he has a body that has just become your personal Holy Grail.

You wonder if you can even remember how to do the Rosary and if the Rosary includes giving thanks for the most perfect ass in the history of mankind and known civilization.

Barker walks by you a second time and openly guffaws. "Girl, you are either not awake yet or you need to rethink your priorities. That's just a man. You got better things to do."

Like what? you honestly wonder. Because you really could stand here all day and just watch.

The sand itching between your lashes reminds you that maybe taking a shower might help you make a good impression on the Holy Grail, and you wander, dazed, into the women's and pray to a God you've only started believing in that He will be merciful in allowing you to spend your days—and especially nights—memorizing every inch of your Holy Grail during your two-week stint.

You've barely finished your attempt to apply makeup in this God-forsaken land when there's a knock at the barracks door. (In fact, this is your first attempt to wear makeup since arriving in Iraq. You figured it would melt off, it would be impossible and ultimately completely unnecessary...but a revered and Holy relic requires the absolute best from any of us, and you would never give anything less than your best to the Holy Grail.)

"It's open and I'm decent," you call out, hoping it's Tango's press liaison here at last with your approved itinerary.

So really, smearing that mascara down your right cheek is understandable when the _Holy Fucking Grail walks in_.

"Dammit," is the first word he hears you utter. Your stomach clenches, and you remind yourself that you are a professional. You are a journalist, and you are here to interview this man and his crew and you will show this man that you are an amazing interviewer and writer and _Oh my God._

Because you've finally seen the face that belongs on the body.

And yes, it's a matched set. This man is not Brad Pitt. You're thankful for this because, honestly, what woman wants to be with a man who really is prettier than she is.

That being said..._Wow._ He should just be the poster for "when God created man, this is what He had in mind". Because he's not pretty, not fey, doesn't have that dewy look that women seem to favor these days (cough those _Supernatural_ guys cough). This man looks like Red Bull was made purely because he asked for it.

This man looks like all the hyperboles ever written about Chuck Norris.

And you now have a thick black line of mascara from your right temple to your lower lip.

"Hi," you manage, grabbing a towelette from your super-super-secret stash that even the Army didn't find and vigorously removing your foundation and that black line.

"You're the reporter, right?"

Well, he does seem to get to the point quickly. That could speed things right along.

"Yep. That's me." You steal another glance at him. He's purposefully not looking at you. _Great._

"Well, I'm Sgt. James. The XO said you're here to do an article about me."

You look back into the mirror to see that now you look lopsided—and sand has decided to clump into the mascara. So you flip the towelette over and scrub off the other side of your face. Then you realize you should say something.

"Yeah. I'm here because you've volunteered for so many rotations. It's not typical of soldiers who are on EOD." You pause. "Or so I'm told."

"No, ma'am." He still avoids looking at you directly, so you turn your back to finish off the scrubbing. You grab your notebook and pen.

"Where would you be the most comfortable for the interview?"

It's as if something snaps into place. He looks you in the eye now, and _Oh my God what color is that? Is that a color? Do we need a color chart to define that?_

You get so lost in that train of thought that you barely hear the words that come out of his mouth—and missing those would be the real shame of your journey, because those words make the following sentence: "Are you asking me 'your place or mine'?"

He grins.

You blush.

"I guess so...I mean, I'd like you to be comfortable."

"There is no such thing as comfortable in the desert, ma'am." But he's still looking at you.

"Can you drop the ma'am?"

"You want me to call you sir? Because I don't think you've got the right equipment to be a sir."

_Is he actually trying to kill me? _

You see the tiniest smirk start to emerge on his mouth.

"I think I'll just refer to you as Gorgeous. Fits better than sir."

Your notebook suddenly decides to obey gravity and slips out of your hands.

You scramble to pick up the notebook. "Actually, I think calling me by my first name would be—"

"Too late. You're tagged. Gorgeous it is." He grabs the notebook for you, which brings your Holy Grail to within a foot of your body, and places it in your hands. "I prefer to be called James, unless the situation warrants something else."

The twinkle in his eye tells you that those "situations" might be exactly the kind of medicine a girl needs in the desert.

You blush more furiously and try rather unsuccessfully to get your heart rate back down under 1000 beats per minute.

_Professional. I am a professional. I will not be smitten with the subject. I will not speculate as to how amazing it would feel to be underneath that body, calling him James or anything else he wants as he..._

"Right. James. Ok. Let's take this outside then."

Gotta be courteous to the other women who use this bunk. (This is as good an excuse as you can give yourself to get the two of you away from semi-private horizontal surfaces so that you can stop imagining him on said surfaces with you.) After all, it wouldn't do to have them need to undress only to be confronted with the Holy Grail of manhood.

The Holy Grail of Manhood. Damn, that would make a great title for this piece. Although the AP might classify that under the heading "Hyperbole".

They would be wrong, of course.

James leads you out of the bunk, toward the seating tent. He holds the door open for you as you exit, falls comfortably in step with you as you walk. "So I gotta ask. What idiot decided it would be a good idea to send a gorgeous single woman without any backup into Iraq where there are sex-starved men all around?"

Your mind doesn't even know where to start with that sentence. _Gorgeous? What backup?_

**Sex-starved?**

And before you can stop it, you hear yourself giggle.

_Oh Hail Mary mother full of grace...ummmm..._

"Now why is that funny? I'm being honest. No offense, but that's just a shitty idea all the way around."

He's serious.

Well, then.

"I was the new hire. No one else wanted to do it because the war here is not a hot issue right now. So they sent me because I'm the new hire and I'm a woman and my take-no-prisoners-ball-busting-feminist boss has something to prove but doesn't want to do it herself."

You sit down, then, facing him across the table.

"So, the usual stupid-ass reasons, then."

"Pretty much." Pause. Wait, did you write down the questions? Do you even have questions—actual, investigative ace journalist questions, not "Can I please cop a feel of your perfect ass?" questions?

Apparently, you did write questions down before your libido completely overwrote your brain's ability to think thoughts higher than "Must procreate with hot man now".

Before you can get to those, however, some part of your brain that you claim no relation to takes over your mouth and says, "What do you mean by backup?"

What? What did you say?

"What?"

Ok, so at least the two of you are on the same page, then.

"You mentioned sending me without backup. What does that mean?" You are carefully looking at your notebook and praying to your brand-new-again God that whatever sentences you utter in the next hour will make sense to him.

"Oh. I meant that they sent you out alone. No other reporters, no camera crew, nobody else. I mean, what kind of moron sends a woman who looks like you to Iraq without a personal bodyguard in the first place?"

"Are you applying for the position?"

_Oh shit I did not just say that_. You vow to never speak to yourself again.

He arches (perfect) eyebrows at you in reply. "Is there a position that you actually prefer?"

**_What?_**

Yes, he really did just say that.

"I was referring to the bodyguard position but I'm told I can be rather athletic when given the right push."

Where is this brash, brazen person coming from inside your head? You know that you have no relation whatsoever to this person, and want to crawl under the table.

And this elicits the first genuine laugh-and grin-from James that you have seen. "Well, at least you've got that going for you."

You have no idea how to respond to that (and apparently the part of your brain that did felt that backslap you just gave it), so back to the questions you wrote down earlier. "So, why do you do it?"

"What?"

Stupid mouth/brain incompatibility. "Why do you volunteer for rotations?"

It seems like a simple and obvious question, but from the look James gives, you start to think that maybe you started with the hardest question instead of leading up to it.

He kind of thrusts his chin out slightly and shakes his head with a shrug. "I guess I do it because I can."

Oh, wait. You grab your iPhone—useless as a phone at the moment (the AP was kind enough to provide you with a Satellite phone the size of a carry-on suitcase but at least it works) but the Evernote app works just fine. "Can I record you?"

He shrugs. "Sure. Something to remember me by."

You chuckle, and ask him to repeat the answer he just gave. Then you follow up (you hard-nosed journalist you). "Most people don't do things because they can. I didn't come here because I can; I came because I was made to. Nobody's making you be here. So why do it?"

He looks you in the eye then, and you're floating, and the feelings in your gut suddenly turn into a Tilt-a-Whirl, and...

"You don't beat around the bush."

"I didn't think it was a difficult question. There's gotta be a reason why you are here. I'm pretty sure it's not the panoramic views."

This elicits a short chuckle. "No." Deep sigh. "Well, simply put, I like what I do."

"You like defusing bombs?" Which, to your ears, really does sound like "You like having spikes shoved into your private bits?"

He barks a laugh then. "You make it sound—I don't know, unsavory."

Unsavory?

This guy has more brains than people have let on.

"Oh, see, I think unsavory, I think of the mafia. I think of this as more of a simple thing, like most people don't like having major surgery done on them, or most people actively avoid situations that spike their blood pressure."

"It doesn't spike my blood pressure."

"Liar."

Those eyes again. "Ok then, Gorgeous. What ideas did you have about me doing this before you got over here? Did you think I do it to save the lives of the men who come here? I do it because I'll get a fucking medal from it someday?" He leans forward now, intensity coming off him like a heat wave. "I do it because I can. That's the real answer. That's the honest answer."

Something in your mind clicks into place then.

If he does this because he can, there are things that he _can't_ do.

You nod, and hope that somehow your visage appears sagely calm like some Zen master bestowed the heavens upon you instead of showing the roiling gut-level interest you feel for this man.

_Oh, shit_. Because now in addition to understanding that he's the Holy Grail of physical male perfection, he's also caught the interest of your intellect.


	3. Chapter 3

You look back down at your notebook in abject hope that you have written something there, anything at all there, that looks like a better line of inquiry. _So, when was the last time you got laid?_ is not acceptable, you admonish yourself.

Before you get a chance to find that perfect question, however, he leans back, studies you for a minute. "Does that scare you?"

"What?"

"That I can do it. It seems to scare a lot of people."

"That you have a statistically improbable completion record?"

The intensity and ferocity start to edge back in around him. "That I like defusing bombs. Most people find it almost abhorrent, like I'm a fucking aberration or some psycho or something."

You feel another click inside your head. "You don't scare me."

He snorts now, a wide grin making his face strikingly attractive. "You could have fooled me."

You open your eyes wide, and decide to tell the truth. That part of your brain that you have no relation to is practically chattering like an animated squirrel in there. "Finding you completely, ridiculously hot doesn't mean I'm scared of you. Or scared of what you can do."

That snaps his mouth closed in a hurry. He runs a large hand over his mouth and jaw.

Turnabout is fair play. "So, does that admission scare you? Do _I_ scare you, Sergeant?"

There is a look in his eyes now, and God help you but that look penetrates beneath you and you feel the wetness start—and that's surprisingly startling when you're in a desert and it's 115 degrees in the shade and you're drinking bottled water like your life literally depends on it.

And from this desiccation, this man can look you in the eye and make you wet. And desperate.

He leans forward slightly now. "No," he says. "No, you don't scare me. But I think your judgment is a little off. You should be scared of me."

When did this conversation turn into Little Red Riding Hood and her Big Bad Wolf, exactly?

Your highly educated brain cannot help it; you simply see what he's doing and have a great inkling as to why. "Is that what you do? Isolate yourself so it's easier to die out there? To have everyone believe that you're reckless and some kind of adrenaline junkie?" You heard the stories, of course. It's part of your briefing packet. The statement from Specialist Eldridge is especially bothersome, although in fairness Eldridge seemed to you an unusually bad fit for combat.

James looks down at his hands, large and coarse and despite the tenor of the argument you are having, you can imagine precisely how those hands would feel sliding along your back. (You try very hard not to squirm in your seat to only moderate success.) "Well shit, Gorgeous, you think you've got me all figured out."

"Do I?" You look at him, and he brings his eyes to meet yours, and what you see there serves only to heighten your arousal. You look at your body with almost detached interest that in 115 degree heat, your nipples can still decide to stand up at attention.

James notices, eyes widening slightly. "Does danger turn you on, Gorgeous? Is that why you're really here?"

You bark out a laugh. "Hardly. I'm here because the Associated Press asked for a reporter from the Boston Globe."

"Boston?" he perks up. "I have family in Boston. Well, had. Cousins."

You purse your lips at him now. "I'm very afraid of what bombs can do. But I'm not afraid of what you can do with them."

His turn, now. "Liar." He glances back down to your tits, still saluting, then back up to your eyes. "And you are afraid of me, too."

God damn him. Because he's right. But what you fear from him isn't abuse or power trips or anything like that.

You fear that you might actually like this man.

It's always a risk when writing about a person, the dreaded "getting too close to the subject". But as you walk alongside James, getting his view of life in Iraq, his thoughts on why the EOD needs to exist in the first place, you realize that maybe getting close to the subject is the only way to properly write one of these pieces, to get into someone else's skin so that the readership can, in turn, walk a few paces in Iraq with Sgt. William James.

You get to stay with James until 1500, when the call comes in. While James' team is not the only EOD team with Tango Company, the sister unit is already handling one bomb situation, so James and his team—Meyers and Pangborn—are off to take a look at what may be a bomb situated in the southeast corner of the city.

As you race over to Tango's press liaison to ask for gear, he tells you that you are not cleared to do ride-alongs with the team until the second week. Sgt. Davis assures you that this wait time will be necessary and that right now you'd be endangering a whole lot more than just yourself and the team.

So you stand back and watch with awe as the men swiftly gather their gear and head out the front gate. James offers you a tiny salute as he passes you by, and suddenly overwhelmed from the heat and pace of keeping up with William James for five hours, you find yourself back in your bunk, exhausted.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hey! Wake up!"

You wake to the taste of sand, again, and squint above you, trying to take in the shape of someone who looks slightly familiar.

It's Haverly.

"Hmmm?" you manage, sitting up and successfully not hitting your head on the top bunk for once. "What's-?"

"I wanted to talk with you." She seems pensive, and you realize that you cannot have been asleep for terribly long because the sun hasn't moved very far in the sky and no one else is back from duty rotations yet. "I figured I would have to catch you when James was out and before the rest of the bunk got back."

You inhale, exhale, and orient yourself as best you can. "Yeah, ok, I guess."

She sits beside you on the bunk then, a move that surprises you. She seemed to need such space the previous day. There's a slightly faraway look in her eyes.

Truthfully, Haverly's decision to talk to you doesn't really surprise you. Sometimes reporters are like cut-rate therapists. Delineating what is "on-the-record" sometimes becomes a very nasty affair, but right now this is Haverly's ballgame, and you're more than willing to play.

So you get up and grab your notebook from the table. She does not agree to be recorded, which really seems par for the course with her. But her tale, and the picture you have of it at the end of her lengthy monologue, goes something like this:

HAVERLY'S STORY

I arrived to Tango Company 72 days into their rotation as a replacement for another officer who was sent home on maternity leave. I'm a Staff Sergeant in charge of the mess for the breakfast and lunch shifts, and as the ranking official I'm also in charge of every single MRE, ration, snack, and bottle of drinkable liquid entering this camp. It's a massive job and one I was wholly unprepared for, but I was the closest available Chief Cook already overseas, so I had to learn on the job, and fast.

I was miserable those first few weeks, when it seemed that everything backed up; we got triple shipments of water one week and none the next, and while some of those problems were my fault, an equal amount of them stemmed from lack of communication between the company, HQ, and my entire team here. It took me almost a month before things finally got into a rhythm, and I was convinced every night that I would not live to see the next morning because I would bust a blood vessel in my brain while I slept in a constant state of agitation.

James was my rock during that first month.

He went out of his way my very first day here in Tango to welcome me. My fiancé knows James from the tour they did in Bravo, so Charlie sent word to James regarding the conditions I was being thrown into and asked if he would just be there to support me. James rose above and beyond what I could have expected of him. He's not a warm and fuzzy guy most of the time, but he was surprisingly caring about how I was handling the pressure, asked often after specifics of my health.

I can't imagine surviving that first month without him.

He started asking me to eat dinner with him every night after I'd settled in, when I wasn't working those 16 or 18 hour rotations just to keep the company going. So after that first month, we made a point of having dinner together when we could, which turned out to be about five times a week on the average. I felt so lucky that I had someone to talk to who understood me, even a little. James and Charlie had never been close—close is a word that doesn't sit well with James—but he seemed a little easier with me. I didn't know if it was because I was a woman or I reminded him of his wife or whatnot, and I didn't really care. He made me feel comfortable, and that made all the difference in the world.

I'd noticed that my bunkmates here at first were a little catty about my friendship with James, and I couldn't figure out why. He'd sought me out, after all, and he did it entirely because he was asked to by someone he knew. It was networking, plain and simple, and that kind of thing is commonplace in the Army. I knew it had nothing to do with anything I could have done.

I'd been in the Army too long to recognize simple, plain jealousy.

Barker and Andover never gave me much trouble about James. I mean, I explained how this had happened, and they both took it in stride and recognized the situation plainly as I did. It was Barker who finally told me why the girls over in Echo bunk were having such a hard time with me.

Apparently, not one but two of them tried to sleep with him, and he'd turned them down flat. Said he had a wife, or something like one, and he wasn't the kind of guy to cheat even if he didn't know where he stood with her. So they thought he was a stand-up guy.

Then came the attention he gave to me, and it was like I was simultaneously a homewrecker and the woman who could turn his eye, and that made me a Public Menace. I had to report one of them to our CO because her "pranks" ended up putting one of my staff in the mess into the medical ward and ultimately shipped home with a broken hip.

Everyone seemed to calm down after that, and at the time I could look everyone in the eye and say, "We are just friends, and it's just because of Charlie."

Until that first night after the big fallout.

The Big Fallout is what I call James' first really risky disarmament that he did while here. It was an intricate bomb, not one of those they typically get on rotation where it's a bomb, and yeah it's nasty, but it's also simple and easy to dismantle.

This one was not. It was situated in two locations tied together, and the second location had a four-year-old girl trapped inside a car. The second bomb was rigged so that it would go off if the girl moved too far in any direction. It was tied to a larger bomb hidden under some rubble. According to James, the explosion would have rocked a crater the size of this entire camp into the landscape.

And there was a four year old involved.

So even if they cleared everything out, James wasn't leaving. And that meant that his team wasn't leaving. And that meant that the second unit, which had come to back them up, wasn't leaving.

And that meant that all of Tango Company held its collective breath.

Most of us gathered around whatever radio we could to overhear what was going on. James had taken off his unit to get his mind out of the chatter.

This is what people don't understand about James: bombmakers are of two kinds, really: the typical idiots who want to blow stuff up, and the masterminds who are playing a game of chess with themselves and everyone else, boxing up a deadly puzzle into a game so neatly that James cannot help but have to figure that puzzle out and outsmart the mastermind, one way or two.

He makes himself sound like some backwoods hick, but he's very bright. And I'm not saying that because I'm in love with him—which I am, by the way, and I know that I am. I also know that there is no future with him because he can't really live in any other place. I dream of a home back in Pennsylvania with Charlie with the white picket fence and the dog and the two kids and Charlie shares that dream.

James dreams of figuring out every puzzle the masterminds put out there, and risking his life to do it is just part of what gets him off. I think he only knows how to live in war where his job is cut and dried and choices are simple.

And I knew that, all of that, even as I listened over the radio on tenterhooks, waiting for word that all was well.

The whole operation took nearly five hours—which in military terms is not a long operation, but in terms of disarmament is a lifetime. Because there could easily be someone holding a remote detonator, just waiting for the right amount of people to arrive, and detonate either one of the bombs. And because of that, every second they have to stay out there becomes exponentially riskier.

And the Big Fallout? Well, that was like some evil mastermind had gotten right into James' core and figured out exactly how to construct a device that would compel him to have to figure it out. That four year old girl had a lot to do with it, of course, and the fact that the hole that would be blown by this bomb would cause significant damage to a 40 block radius from point of impact was equally compelling.

So we waited.

I owe James' life, and the life of everyone on that team, to Pangborn. Because James assigned Pangborn to cover them from up top that day, and that kid must have killer eyesight, because he saw what no one else in the company did: the location of the mastermind.

In retrospect it was easy to find, but at the time, absolutely no one saw it except Specialist Pangborn. I still think he deserves a medal for that one. And he found the guy within the first 30 minutes.

That helped things, but the mastermind kept saying he wasn't the only one with a detonator and that one of the detonators was a cell phone. Saying that in Iraq is sort of like saying that you're letting your children play with the nitro-glycerin, because the phones they use are such old technology that anything can set those suckers off. James speculated later that it must have taken the men who built those bombs at least a year just to conceive of the intricacy needed to make it "foolproof".

When we got word that James had finally found the detonator on the second device and he physically carried that four year old girl over to her grandmother…I don't think I have ever experienced such relief in my life. I sagged with relief into my bunk—and promptly left to go to the mess, where I was going to break out some of the food reserved for the Colonel and special events and whip up a meal to write home about for those teams.


	5. Chapter 5

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Herein lies SMUT. You've been warned.

I was really proud of my kitchen crew—we all put in some overtime and made a meal that could have come straight from your Mom's Christmas table. Roast Beef, actual mashed potatoes, gravy, string beans, a horseradish/béarnaise concoction that I came up with to garnish the beef that probably earned me an eventual promotion to Personal Chef around here at some point…those boys (and Andover) ate like kings when everyone finally got back to base.

I saved out James' meal myself. I knew how he liked his Roast Beef (medium-rare), saved him some Au Jus, made sure he got the best of everything. And knowing James like I did, I knew that he wouldn't come immediately to have dinner with the boys.

So I brought the meal to his barracks.

I sat there, waiting, knowing my kitchen crew could handle the cleanup, would gladly handle the cleanup for our heroes of the day. I waited because I knew that James would get back, set up his gear, and then head almost instantly for the showers before finally settling down to dinner.

I cut him off at the pass by being in his barracks when he returned.

I wanted to commemorate the occasion—it was a pretty special occasion, after all—by lighting up some candles instead of using those halogen lamps, and I broke out one of my sacred bottles of wine that I kept in my personal locker for something that I considered truly worthy.

Well, James had certainly been worthy that day.

It didn't look to me in my head the way it must have looked to everyone else. If it had been Andover on that line, soothing that four year old girl and taking the lead to dismantle the bombs instead of Andover as part of the team that found the bombs and was in charge of evac? I would have done the exact same thing for her, candles and wine and everything. It's just that I would have done it in our bunk, where it's less private.

James had his own private quarters, and that wasn't my fault. Besides, he was my friend, and I wanted to be there for him, because I knew that this kind of action did something to him, and maybe it was time for him to be able to share that with a friend.

So when he walked into his quarters after stowing and fixing his gear, he was faced with a meal fit for a Duke, if not a King, candlelight, wine, and a woman.

It was not what he was expecting to say the very least.

It also was the first time a woman had been in his vicinity after he had gone through one of these extreme highs.

And I happened to be a woman, I learned, that he was very attracted to.

So he walked in the door, and I sat there, waiting patiently, expecting him to grab his gear and head for the men's for his post-action shower.

I was not expecting him to cross his room in three strides, pick me up out of my chair, and kiss the hell out of me.

By the time I realized what he was doing, and I realized how it looked, I also took a really hard look inside me and saw, to my horror, shame, and bewildered delight that I had been ready for that kiss from the moment I'd met the man.

His lips were dry from being outside in the harsh elements all day, but his tongue was wet and supple as he teased me with it, gaining entrance to my mouth and fisting his hand into my hair.

I let out a long moan at that point, and felt my body respond to him, pressing myself closer to him as I snaked my arms around his back.

He broke the kiss then, looking me dead in the eye before bending his head again. "God," he breathed at me, peppering my neck with little kisses and licks. "I've wanted this for so long."

I responded by taking the ends of his shirt in my hands, levering myself away slightly from his body as I pulled the shirt up and off from him. He ducked out of it, shucked the sleeves from those perfect arms, and brought me back to him to capture my lips with his.

His skin felt electric to me. Every touch seemed ignite my passion a little more, draw me into his breath. His smooth skin on his back was in sharp contrast to those rough hands as he slipped his hands under my shirt and I felt him tugging in much the same way as I had moments earlier. I once again leaned away long enough to disentangle myself from the garment, then found myself looking into these deep dark pools of grey.

"You're beautiful." He took one of those hands then, and began moving slowly up to my breasts, kneading one through my almost-painfully sturdy bra as his tongue once again began an exploration of my neck. I wasn't surprised to find my hands moving to rid myself of my hard-working bra, exposing my rather ample bosom to this man, this dangerous, sexy man whom I knew would not stop until he had taken me completely.

I threw my head back as that rough, perfect hand found my breast. The moan that came out of his throat, however, was designed to attack my pussy, and I remember feeling shocked at how that one sound could make me feel soaked through.

His mouth traveled a line then, down to my breasts, although he did stop for a moment as he dropped to his knees, looking up at me with candlelit eyes, taking in my half-naked form as if I was the oasis in his desert. "Jesus, baby, you're fucking perfect. So beautiful," he breathed, looking me back in the eye as his mouth latched onto one puffy nipple, and I cried out, far louder than I expected, as his tongue began to do things and suddenly I was feeling things, completely new and different things from anything I had felt before with a man and I was going to fly apart right then and there—

And that's when my knees started buckling.

He grasped my body to his, then, instinctively, holding me up as he kept up his assault on my breast, licking and sucking and _oh my God_…

I found it very difficult to catch my breath. "I gotta sit down," I panted at him.

He looked up at me then, looking full into my face, half like a lost little boy, half like the man I wanted to dominate me in bed, and I felt my heart shatter under the weight of everything.

He stood, then, slowly, eyes never leaving mine. He bent down and kissed me gently, suddenly unhurried, his hands cupping my face as he walked slowly backwards, bringing us toward the bed. He sat down, dragging me with him, still lavishing my mouth with his lips, his tongue. His hands came back to my tits, still pebbled into arousal, and the sensations were overwhelming.

My hands traveled south, then, to fumble with his zipper, because I knew that despite this new pace to keep it slow, we weren't going to be afforded as much time as he seemed to think. The hero of the hour was going to have to make an appearance in front of the troops, and if he didn't come of his own volition, the men of his team would seek him out…and find me here with him.

He gathered my hand into his, moving it away and placing it back on his chest instead, wordlessly telling me to slow down and savor these moments.

I pulled my mouth from his. "We're not gonna have enough time for that. They're gonna wanna see you over at the mess eventually, and I don't want Meyers and Pangborn walking in here to find us looking like this." I moved my hand back down then, sliding the zipper down, making quick work of the top button, and moving my hand inside to grip his cock.

His cock.

Holy shit.

I knew that, in the common vernacular, James was packing. I mean, you get around a man in all kinds of conditions and you see things sometimes that you don't intend to (or you do intend to and refuse to let yourself think that way). And I'd seen the outline of what looked to be a fairly thick piece of manhood sometimes late at night when I told myself I wasn't looking. Then again, I thought maybe it just looked that inviting by being on James' rather athletic frame.

I just didn't know that I had only been privy at that point to the previews.

I fished it out of its confines, exposing it to the night air, and _Holy Mary Mother of God_.

I'd never seen anything that beautiful or that dangerous in my entire life.

His penis stood up thick and tall, much longer than I could have ever guessed—not that length actually matters; the typical vagina bottoms out at around seven inches and most men have the capacity to move enough to traverse that length with little difficulty. James, however, would fill that entire length with a bit of extra.

That was hardly the most impressive part, however. I have small hands—they make for deft kitchen work, but they are the size of an average 12 year old's—and my hand could not fit around his cock. I mean, at least an inch and probably more to spare before thumb and middle finger could meet.

Simply put, his cock was glorious and mesmerizing.

The sounds he made as I put my hand on it, slowly jacking from root to tip, were like spikes into the soundboard of my soul, traveling then straight to my pussy and making me feel as though my thighs were simply overflowing with need, and I felt a base ache of emptiness inside that needed to be filled, commanded, taken.

I reluctantly let go of him and stood up to divest myself of my own pants. He looked up at me then with eyes full of more emotions than I could count—lust, almost a dangerous edge of desire, trust, and a strange sense of wonder.

He'd moved his pants down his legs as I dropped mine down. Getting them over the boots for either of us was going to be impossible but I didn't care. I threw myself back down on the bed then and pulled him to come over me.

If I was going to do this—if I was going to cheat on Charlie and James on his wife—then I wanted to be absolutely taken, and I wanted him on top of me to do it.

Strangely, he seemed to understand that. He crawled onto me then, fisting his shaft in his hands, positioning himself at my entrance.

And then he stopped, poised to enter, and rumbled, "You're sure?" at me.

_Like a knife into my gut_. This was a good man.

"Yes," I hissed out, and he took my assent as he plunged himself into me. He put in only a few inches at first because I suddenly had a baseball bat between my thighs and it felt amazing and wonderful and he knew I needed to adjust. He pulled out slightly then, and slid in farther, stopped, and repeated the procedure until I had that monster entirely within me.

Then he stilled on top of me, looking me full in the eyes. "You ok?"

_Where was all this tenderness coming from?_ James was the kind of man to take you, to dominate you, and yet he's being as considerate a lover as I had ever had.

And I needed him to dominate me, to fuck me through the bedsprings and make me forget my own name.

I brought one hand to his face then, to thank him for the kindness. The other I secured to his ass and pushed. "I need you to fuck me. Oh God, please, baby, just fuck me hard and make me come."

That brought an unexpected grin to his face. "As the lady commands."

And then he moved.

The strokes were long and slow at first. I hunched my pelvis up at him in frustration to get him to move faster, dammit!, but he just chuckled as he slowly fucked me, and the sensations were incredible.

Places that I didn't know existed inside me began singing and begging for more, to be touched and pummeled.

"Harder," I moaned, and he just chuckled.

"Patience."

"I don't think we have the time for patience!" I growled miserably, rolling my hips up at him again in a vain effort to get him to ride me, and hard.

"Trust me baby. I'm gonna fuck you so hard you won't be walking right for a couple of days. But this, I want to savor this for just a minute. You're so tight, God, like a vice on my cock. And so wet, so slick for me…God," he panted above me as he painted me with those slow, sure, amazing strokes.

I felt so full, so deeply satisfied .And that scared me more than a little.

And then he took one hand and slid it between us, moving down my body until he found my clit, and one rough swipe with his index finger made me shiver and moan. He chuckled darkly as he brought his lips to mine, tongue to my open and waiting mouth as he began to play my body like a symphony conductor.

And oh, what a symphony we made.

His movement on my clit was as lazy as his strokes within me seemed to be, but he somehow sensed how to attack my clit at just the right moments to make a counterpoint from the deep thrusts with his cock.

He'd barely started working me up when my orgasm blindsided me. I stiffened, grabbing his hair and pressing his mouth more insistently onto mine as I tried to muffle my scream. My entire body shook, and my feet started that strange pulsating dance that meant both release and the potential for _more_.

James felt that orgasm too, and he stilled for a moment within me. When he pulled his mouth from mine gently, he said, "Holy shit, baby, I'm gonna make you come so hard you'll never want for another man."

How prophetic those words turned out to be.

And then he proceeded to move a whole lot faster.

Gone were the languid movements within me, replaced instead with long, sure, but faster strokes, a rhythm that seemed to sate a need within me I had not known until this moment.

It was perfect.

This new, more tolerable pace also brought with it tremors as his shaft hit places within me that, once they had been uncovered, positively screamed to be touched. He seemed to be hitting every nerve ending all at once.

I'd never known if I had a G-spot until James. Charlie had tried to find it with me, and had been patient and wonderful and it seemed that I was not one of those women blessed with that spongy area inside of me.

Well, I definitely had a G-spot. It just was out of the reach of Charlie's fingers.

The quicker James' strokes became, the more that spot began to sing, to moan, to praise and worship the strong invader…

…and out of nowhere I came again, toes curling up as my walls clenched down on him, stilling him even as I arched my back and found myself screaming, which made him cover my mouth with his once more. I began babbling incoherently, and that's when James decided to actually take me in hand and fuck the shit out of me.

Gone was the healthy but predictable rhythm of his hips. He grabbed onto my hips, then, and began to punish me with each quick stroke, sliding nearly his full length in and out of me in the rapid rolling of his pelvis.

This had the unintended benefit of squeezing my tiny clit between our pelvic bones, and I came again almost instantly, my skin blazing with each touch. "Oh GOD," I wailed. "God, fuck me, God I've never wanted…FUCK."

He began making noises, grunting noises at first but then they swelled to a crescendo of endearment, "Oh God, baby, fuck, I want you so much, God, baby, Jesus, FUCK."

He pinned his hips to mine, then, and I felt his shaft bloat within me as he came again and again.

He stilled but stayed on top of me, looking me in the eyes, and I suddenly felt tears spring up.

That had been the best moment of my life.


End file.
